2Engage is growing its African footprint

2Engage is building on its success in Africa, with customer engagement and incentive solutions that deliver value to customers and companies across multiple industries.

Based and operational out of South Africa, 2Engage has a presence in eleven African countries including Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. With over 200 rewards and benefit partners, 2Engage connects companies in the fields of banking, mobile, insurance, debt collection, retail, as well as a large number of subscription-based products, with these partners to deliver value to customers.

Andrew Weinberg, CEO of 2Engage and wholly owned subsidiary Retail Engage, says that 2Engage has developed numerous rewards and loyalty programmes that have proven to grow customer acquisition, retention, and reinforce value-enhancing behaviour in the African markets where it operates.

“One of the latest projects that we have designed and implemented, is the Sanlam Premium Rewards programme which launched in Kenya in November last year. This programme is aimed at providing Sanlam Life policy holders with monthly rewards for timely payment of their life insurance premiums. We are starting to see notable results in the early stages of the programme and are pleased to be reporting positive shifts in member behaviours related to the benefits and rewards offered as well as the structure of the rewards programme itself.”

General Manager at SPA Life Distribution, Marguerite Pretorius, says that they approached 2Engage to assist with understanding which behaviour in their customers should be rewarded in order to change behaviour so that these customers start paying their premiums on a regular basis. “It was important for us to structure the programme in such a way that it provided tangible value adds to customers, and the team at 2Engage did a brilliant job at enlisting value partners that could provide a variety of quality rewards to clients,” says Pretorius.

Weinberg says that given these successes the time is right to expand the Pan-African market. “The Covid pandemic has plunged the world into a socioeconomic crisis and customers have adopted fundamental shifts in their behaviour as they aggressively try to save money. Discretionary spending is subdued, and customer loyalty is tested as they battle with prioritising their spend, resulting in erratic customer behaviour across many industry sectors. This has been costly to businesses servicing these markets.”

Within this reality, 2Engage’s portfolio of solutions has become even more relevant to companies exploring growth across the African markets, and beyond. Weinberg says, “2Engage solutions have proven themselves to be effective over 8 years, consistently evolving and delivering benefits to companies and consumers. Our system incorporates cloud-based technology, IP and various methodologies that can be custom-designed to meet any client’s strategic objectives and rapidly deployed into any market. We offer a single digital platform that delivers centralised management of campaigns, in-country operations, configurable rules for customisation, and tailored rewards across multiple territories.”

In recent research conducted by 2Engage on behalf of clients reaching several African markets, results showed that the most desired benefits by the clients’ customers were, in order of preference:

• Discounts, cash back and points to redeem on monthly expenditure such as groceries, healthcare, household retail, transport, mobile and data.
• Value-added benefits and assistance services including short-term insurance, access to free emergency assistance, health and wellness support and educational support services.
• Lifestyle-orientated surprise & delight rewards in travel, entertainment food and beverage.

“Customer preference of rewards and benefits have changed significantly over the last year and the extent and quality of research we conduct, guides the development of appropriate, tailored campaigns to increase their reach and success rate exponentially,” says Weinberg.

In an article published in December 2020 by Atlantic Council, titled ‘African outlook 2021’, Charlie Robertson, Renaissance Capital’s global chief economist says, “African markets have an advantage in 2021 and beyond because the continent has been least hurt by Covid-19 relative to other regions (a story similar to that of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis). Consequently, low interest rates in the West could push more institutional investors to chase high yields in Africa by increasing portfolio exposure in Africa.”

In the same article, Edem Adzogenu, co-founder of AfroChampions, based in Ghana, says “Getting Africa ‘to catch up’ is the wrong framing. The attitude must be, ‘can you turn in a completely different direction and perfect another model that passes the others, but also learns from them’.”

2Engage invites businesses that are seeking growth in or expansion into the African market to connect with them to investigate strategic partnerships for in-country engagement, customer acquisition and retention.

For more information visit 2engage.co.za or follow 2Engage on LinkedIn @2Engage/RetailEngage.

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ISSUED ON BEHALF OF 2ENGAGE

For media queries please contact Tatum Lowe on tatum@2engage.co.za 

About 2Engage2Engage is a leading customer engagement and incentive solutions business with a presence in 11 African countries. The company’s experience encompasses the design, implementation and management of rewards and loyalty programmes, CRM solutions, and ROI reporting and analytics tools across a variety of markets including retail, FMGC, liquor and taverns, financial services, mobile and data, as well as broadcast and media.

Retail Engage, a subsidiary of 2Engage, delivers a turnkey shopper rewards solution called bonsella®, which operates in over 100 independent retail stores nationwide, connecting stores, shoppers and brands, and providing business and marketing insights to the main market retail sector. bonsella® leverages a leading digital platform to deliver instant gratification rewards to over 1.8 million rewards members, while simultaneously gathering detailed shopper data and insights on customer behaviour.

For more information go to 2engage.co.za, email info@2engage.co.za or follow us on LinkedIn @2Engage/RetailEngage and Facebook @bonsellarewards